Saturday 9 July 2011

Pleasures Lie Thickest...


PLEASURES lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy, of silence, or of sound,
Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
The very meanest things are made supreme
With innate ecstacy. No grain of sand
But moves a bright and million-peopled land,
And hath its Edens and its Eves, I deem.
For Love, though blind himself, a curious eye
Hath lent me, to behold the hearts of things,
And touch’d mine ear with power. Thus, far or nigh,
Minute or mighty, fix’d or free with wings,
Delight from many a nameless covert sly
Peeps sparkling, and in tones familiar sings.

(Laman Blanchard)

10 comments:

  1. What a nice picture... it reminds me a bit of this one by Maxfield Parrish. And the poem reminds me of The Lake by the inimitable Mr. Poe...

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  2. It's called Peace and it's an original by this artist whose name I can't remember.

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  3. OK her name is Diane Leonard and her paintings are truly beautiful. Now I'm off to check out your links.

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  4. OK I've checked out both...I loved the poem. Really, really.

    That Edgar Allan Poe is something else...and all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

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  5. ...from a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, out of SPACE--out of TIME...

    I have never read anything by him that didn't leave me absolutely mesmerized. :)

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  6. You ever read Annabel Lee? Which was kind of what Nabokov's Lolita was based on?

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  7. Yup, I certainly have! An abiding, obsessive (if entirely inappropriate) love. Ditto for Lolita. Tried to read some other stories by Nabokov and felt like I was walking 10 miles to gain an inch. Dense and profoundly ponderable, but my God--this is definitely not pleasure reading! I felt the same way when my sister started dating a philosophy professor, and then decided that Heidegger was the bees knees. She wanted to discuss his unique perspective on the world, so recommended a few books (translated from German) to help get me up to speed. Oh. My. I wish I had died in a fire, instead. I'm sure the translators were doing their level best, but some concepts and ideas... just cannot survive the process. I forced myself to finish one of the introductory texts and promptly decided that his unique ideas and perspective would have to live and die with him, because I was not about to spend several months trying to sort it all. Bad Dasein...

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  8. Hahahahaha. Yeah. That's the kind of thing you do when you're retired and no longer have to deal with the day to day aspects of living. You read poetry and philosophy, drink wine, write ponderous tomes that no one understands (but everyone nods wisely and say they do)...wait a minute, that was yesterday!

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  9. Surprise! You're retired and didn't even know it! :)

    That's part of the reason for working slavishly the next several years; when I reach a point where I've finally had enough, I'd like to be able to take a year off to do nothing but read books and travel cheaply by car to various natural wonders around the country. Bliss! ;-)

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  10. Working slavishly? Hmmmm....I don't exactly work slavishly. I've been drunk nearly every night this week. Or sorta drunk.

    A friend assures me that this is normal.

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